Each year there are as many as six hundred thousand reported injuries nationwide to health care professionals from needle sticks. Many of these sticks occur from needles used for making connections to intravenous fluid lines or bags or for transferring medicants from one vial to another. Because of associated risks of serious infection, hospitals are required to conduct an examination of each such injury by needle stick and to perform expensive screening of the injured for such diseases as hepatitis and AIDS. Some localities also require hospitals to administer expensive prophylactics such as AZT to injured health care professionals on request.
For these reasons, many in the health care field are now advocating the elimination of needles, also referred to as "sharps", from all nonessential medical uses. Although alternatives to needles for making connections to intravenous fluid lines, bags, and vials are now available, acceptance of these alternatives has been slowed by difficulties with making such a radical transition from long-established practices and standards involving needles.
One alternative is a needleless injection port arrangement described in recently issued U.S. Pat. No. 4,915,687 to Sivert. The arrangement includes a valve that is displaceable by a needleless tip of a syringe for opening a passageway in an injection port to an intravenous fluid line. The displaceable valve of Sivert replaces a conventional valve made from a self-sealing elastomeric material that is penetrable by a needle for opening a passageway through a similar injection port.
Although valved connections like Sivert's appear to provide an effective replacement for the conventional elastomeric valves of present intravenous systems, such a changeover to needleless connections is expected to take many years to complete. In addition, interim incompatibilities between the different connections may cause considerable confusion and increase cost to hospitals by requiring duplication of certain inventories to ensure accessibility of intravenous fluid lines, bags, and vials.